The South African Competition Commission has cracked the whip on medical products and equipment suppliers taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to hike prices of critical personal protection equipment (PPE), contrary to the country’s consumer protection regulations.
Two separate calculations suggest that the estimated ‘herd immunity threshold’ of 60 to 70% is too high for the pandemic. This threshold is crossed when enough people in a population are immune to a disease, after infection or vaccination, to provide indirect protection to those who are not immune.
Climate change is causing cities around the world to become uncomfortably hot. Researchers are increasingly looking to nature for answers, with several cool new materials in the pipeline, reports Jasmin Fox-Skelly